Manhattan on Trailer Trash Skylines
by Annie Christ
Summary: While dealing with being the once upon a time cheerleader in a Dusk Point trailer park, Roxas never thought meth teeth, the covers of foreign fashion magazines and Rhapsody in Blue could all be synonymous with hope. AU. Roxas-centric.


_Full summary because FFN won't post it: _While dealing with being the once upon a time cheerleader in a Dusk Point trailer park, Roxas never thought meth teeth, the covers of foreign fashion magazines and Rhapsody in Blue could all be synonymous with hope. AU. Roxas-centric.

_Warning: _Aside from typical Mature content there's also slur usage custom to small southern towns, politically incorrect banter and misogyny. All of which is acknowledged by me as the writer and necessary to properly convey the nuance of this story. In no way do I condone these behaviors, but they're indisputably real.

* * *

_**C**__**hapter One**_

"How're you gonna fondle my balls and ask about my old man?"

Small Town, USA is the most condensed weaving on Earth's loom. In the land of birdhouses and yards only large enough for a garden salad little goes unheard of whether someone tries to hide his shame or not. In theory there's a filing cabinet of confessional booth transcripts tucked away for the book club's bi-weekly meeting, but in reality human beings just _really _love to gossip. If they say otherwise, then they're filthy liars attempting to burn the bridge between themselves and a potentially ugly image. Really, people care about who had an abortion, where someone sets his genitals, how much that boob job cost and what's on who's taxes because when a person lives in a town that hasn't even acquired a Starbucks yet there's a lot of time on hand to care.

Because of this disregard for confidential information there are rarely anonymous people be they known via infamy or not, but there _are_ faceless enigmas who manage to go unseen for inappropriately long spans of time. Occasionally, these people become their own class of glorified legend. Usually, they're isolated white trash with a laundry list of indictments and a starring role on the police scanner.

"Touch me again and see what happens, you fucking queer!"

And then sometimes they're both.

Main Street's sidewalk was my flowering pot as I stood with a sweating cup of iced coffee in my left hand and posture homage to the amount of time I spent sprawled out on my grandparents' loveseat. The small of my back was rain on a windshield and the tank top I'd tugged on while walking off my slanted porch was sopping and sticking to sunburnt skin. During my three minute walk dog shit had romanced the bottom of my shoe and I'd started secreting Chinese restaurant dish water by the end of my neighborhood's three block stretch. Persevering in the name of a cream drink with a spritz of coffee that tasted like cat urine was demeaning. I acknowledged that every time my lips hit the straw, but it hadn't stopped me from emptying my wallet thrice a week since someone had decided enough was enough and opened a locally owned coffee shop. Minimum wage held dominion over my adolescent life and overpriced coffee was the only thing my disposable income covered. That and a thirty dollar a month subscription to cheap pornographic websites featuring men.

I liked my coffee like my men; tasteless and disgusting.

"Why don't you put the cuffs on a little tighter? I like it when police men get rough."

A skull meeting a solid surface echoed as riposte.

The clear plastic cup I was clasping onto threatened to slip onto pavement and I released a sharp grunt when I swapped hands to wipe the freed one on my grey-blue athletic shorts. Currently, my skin held dominion over the sun's oppressive rays as I cautiously raised my arm to discern the rate of my sweat glands' progressing rage. Deciding things could be worse, I reached into the plunging depths of my pocket for a self-condemnatory pack of Marlboros only to retract my tacky fingers and tilt my head back in defeat. The newest soft pack with its sweat tempered cigarettes had been left drowning somewhere in the sea of my cum stained bed's duvet. I now had nothing to do with my hands but smack my thumb and forefinger together and rub at the summer air's stickiness. It was seeping into my skin and resurfacing as honey.

Across the street sat a humming police car in front of the local courthouse and two moving silhouettes, but I was too immersed in the self-pity of having to walk four blocks back to my house to notice. I'd seen more than one angry person frisked in my lifetime, and there wasn't anything remarkable about it. My eyes slated to half-lidded, and I contemplated stepping back inside to postpone exposure to the summer air. That was until the shouting morphed into what sounded like someone screaming their Miranda Rights to the tune of the ABCs song. Halting in mid-pivot, I curved my attention to the scene I'd been ignoring.

The squad car's back passenger door was thrown open with a swirling blood smear painted across the tinted window. Alone on the footpath in a town that hadn't bothered to wake up yet, I was the sore thumb among unlit shop fronts. I took a sip and stared down at my cup when I realized I was already sucking in gulps of air. I'd had the coffee for five minutes and it was already the watery essence of what-had-been. After determinedly shaking the ice I returned to sucking at whatever excess liquid the melting ice left and waited for the perpetrator's unveiling. The car door was hiding the elusive man as the officer attempted to shove him inside, and from where I stood it resembled sodomy above arrest.

"I will fuck your mouth so hard!"

Police Officer had intentions of fighting the man to the death, and when his arms looped around the detainee's waist he arched back only to reveal the kicking and screaming culprit. To be exact, he only revealed half of him. Skin tight leopard pants on spidery legs bicycled toward the bloodied sky. The appendages were connected to a pair of scuffed white cowboy boots and lanky arms reached upward in a frantic doggy paddle. Concerned for my own welfare, I licked my lips and looked around to see if anyone else had arrived to witness what I was seeing. I was completely alone and the coffeehouse's Maroon 5 jazz cover was blocking out the screaming. I nervously hummed along.

One of the boots caught the top of the car with a jarring smack, and the long-limbed figure kicked off to send himself and the officer flying back onto asphalt. A defining thud came afterward and it was then I managed a lightning glimpse of geranium hair with dirty roots. The cuffed entity rolled off the officer and leapt to his feet without the use of his hands, stumbled to gain his equilibrium then spat beside the law man's head.

Olive-toned features were caked in blood draining from his nose while his alien cheekbones were high and body emaciated. Residual muscle mass created defined terrain along his thin biceps yet the muscle tee he wore had arm holes large enough to reveal an undeniable beer gut accentuated by an untamed trail of dark hair and unidentifiable ink. He was too pale for his skin type; there were reddened splotches along his arms that looked like infected bug bites and his pants were stained by grease. In short, he was the most disgusting human being I had ever laid eyes on. Earth had birthed him onto the planet with thin lips and catty eyes meant to stir the pot for Mother Nature and it was borderline awe-inspiring. He didn't have to stand beside me for me to know he smelled like ass.

The man glanced around, fleetingly looked me over with illuminated eyes and then, with his arms still locked behind him, began running down the sidewalk in the opposite direction of the police station. While my lips parted into an uncertain 'O,' I paid close attention to the way he stumbled over feet too small for his figure. He paused at the end of the block, looked left and then right only to turn back around and jet toward the west end. When he shot past me the second time, I noted how his ribs showed like tumbleweed branches. His shoulders were thorns hiked upward and he continued almost tripping until steadying himself by the Grace of God.

Like a cloud of desert dust he disappeared down a backstreet. Only then did the police officer struggle to his feet and jog his fat ass toward me. It hadn't occurred to me being the sole witness to his occupational failure would make me a part of the problem, and I decided I was going to temporarily hate myself for not leaving sooner. What I'd witnessed wasn't something I wanted to be associated with beyond distant judging. For all I knew the redheaded man was an escapee from the local mental ward, and I didn't know anyone with the motivation to deal with that. Just thinking about it exhausted me.

The officer wheezed. "Did you see which way that little piece of shit went?"

'Little' wasn't what I would've used, but my better judgment told me not to say so.

I pointed east. "He went that way."

* * *

Hayner blasted his stereo on the kind of decibel frequency meant for Madison Square Garden. When we sat in his rusted Sedan that was reverence to a fast food dumpster I always knew what to expect. Before either of us could buckle our seatbelts he dove straight for the volume knob and cranked it with a single rotation of his wrist. I could never decide if the bass was more like a devastating earthquake or deep tissue massage minus the tranquility and plus the Wu-Tang Clan. There was nothing relaxing about Hayner's enthusiasm for hip-hop with his pride when he nailed complex verses. Hayner went hard, and he did so with gesticulations and facial spasms as unnatural as they were embarrassing. His life was a music video, and I was the girl in the background wearing painted on hot pants and hoop earrings big enough to give birth through.

With summer greened oaks rolling past our windows, I chewed on a piece of spearmint gum and flipped a page in the copy of GQ I'd plucked off a stand while buying chips from 7-Eleven. Between my numbing thighs was a compressed fountain drink that solidified chewing gum and on my face sat knockoff wraparound sunglasses. Each pair of shoes on the glossed pages was plump eggplants laced tight in corsets, and I could've sworn blue socks and black shoes was an unforgivable sin. Then again, it was always nice to reaffirm I was tasteless swine. The thought of owning expensive things was condescending, but the models made me want to yank it for days. Because of this I didn't mind dipping into my limited funds for the monthly issue even if I was typically left more dumbfounded than informed once post-coital.

We'd been sitting in five 'o clock traffic with the windows rolled down for two minutes before Hayner spoke. "_Jesus Christ_, it's hot. I'm one more heat stroke from stripping."

I flipped a page and paused. "Please don't."

My shoulder shifted back because it'd been sitting in the sun long enough to begin stinging and I anticipated my eventual half-baked bicep. Arching my spine toward the dash until it crackled like rice cereal, I attempted to read another page but was too restless for anything alphabetic. Hayner pressed his palm against the horn and I glanced up at the car in front of us.

"That's it!" Hayner let go of the wheel, put the car in neutral, and took off his shirt. "We're getting naked!"

Dusk Point had been reduced to a bubbling cauldron of melted hell. Everywhere I looked the world was wriggling toward the sky and distorting the cubicle of a town I'd been born into and would prematurely die in if the heat didn't forgo its vice grip on the city's balls. While Hayner decided to confirm the town's rumors about us sucking each other's dicks, I seared a bumper sticker's message onto my brain. Essentially, fetuses made for good cartoons and the word 'abortion' should never be splayed onto a car in the kind of font one might see on a kindergarten classroom's announcement board. _Good morning, children. Who can recite the dilation and curettage procedure from memory? The first person to get it right wins a Jolly Rancher and coupon to Pizza Hut._

"Do you _have_ to take your pants off?"

Hayner's attempt to shuck his pants in the front seat looked like an interpretive dancer trying to convey the struggles of the United States' crashing economy. "Yes, Roxas, I _have_ to take my pants off. The sweat from my junk is gluing my thigh to my pant leg. It's melding together. A chemical change _is_ happening right now as we speak."

"You didn't have to tell me that."

A denim bomb hit my face and my head made nice with the door. "But I _did_…"

Everyone had laughed during Hayner's senior presentation about his future career as a music video director. Maybe it was because there weren't many people who aspired to leave small towns like Dusk Point, but the bonus of Hayner's life path was that it had been interesting and informed. After sitting through approximately nineteen presentations about how important it was for so-and-so to become a nurse practitioner he saved the day with a five year plan that meant something to me. Not that it was condemnable to want a simple life as the local bedpan changer, but that kind of aspiration made for good nap material three weeks pre-graduation. By the end of the week I knew more about the salary and prerequisites for a nurse than my own contrite bullshit. I didn't actually want to be an astrologist, but when someone is expected to reach into the trenches of his ass and figure out his life in a week anything sounds good on paper.

After listening to Hayner's struggles and bull grunting, I tossed my magazine onto the backseat containing turntables and tugged my shirt over my head. Traffic didn't happen where we lived, and to quench curiosity, I leaned out the window, grasped onto the roof and tugged myself out until I was balanced on the window liner. Over the tops of the cars I could see a stream of vehicles crossing the intersection, and it wasn't until the white hearse trailed past did it dawn on me there was a funeral procession eating up the one of four roads that made up Dusk Point. It was no wonder we'd been sitting there so long.

Hayner was still bitching. "We're like heated glass. If someone set us on a cool surface we'd combust."

"It's a funeral."

That made him pause. "Who died?"

My back began to itch from the heat, but I continued watching in my perched position. "No one we know. Guess it doesn't matter, but you should feel like a shit for bitching so much."

"Actually, no, because it's still hot as a taint up in here."

When the steady trickling of traffic returned and Hayner pulled the car out of neutral I was wondering about the corpse. A dead body had been close yet completely unseen and to witness the transportation of it seemed intrusive. Not that it bothered me. A dead body is a dead body is a dead body, and the fear of a shell had been lost on me since I'd seen my great aunt's bloated corpse at ten years old. Her lipstick had been missing, her hair parted wrong and they'd Crisco-ed her into a lime chiffon dress better left to prom resale than the underworld. Back then I wondered how they got her in the dress. The mental image of that parodic struggle was too real.

I'd thoughtlessly reached forward for the tuner on the radio because I'd drained my patience for Hayner's preferred genre. I liked it, but not when he was one of those people who found a song and proceeded to play it to the point of a negative T-cell count. There were some songs we groaned at solely because he had ruined them for the both of us, and as Fleetwood Mac poured through static and a neighboring station's transmission I figured it was better than the repetitive mentioning of some woman's ass big enough to fill a hot air balloon.

"Fleetwood Mac is that group you stop your life for."

"I don't know, Roxas. Can you handle the changing seasons of your life?"

"Mirror in the sky what is love, Hayner."

Before he could retort conversationally the chorus came on and we were distracted by Stevie Nicks for the rest of the drive back to my grandparents' house. I was the vagabond grandchild who technically wasn't even theirs, but they'd continued acknowledging me even after the paternity test said not to. The Dungeons and Dragons basement dweller with a penchant for witchcraft and Star Wars hadn't been my father. Instead my mom had reproduced with a man three states north during one of her runaways. She'd been sixteen and the mysterious trucker had strung her along long enough to spread her legs and break a condom. When I'd asked why she'd slept with him all she could tell me was he'd danced like no one she'd ever seen before. I hadn't bothered asking anything else after that.

Of course, I didn't know I wasn't biologically Dungeons and Dragons' son until I was eight years old when his then wife insisted on a paternity test. I wasn't sure what the swabbing had meant until an episode of Maury came on after Saturday morning cartoons two years post-testing. Really, it wasn't a surprise since I'd already been informed I wasn't biologically equipped to be a part of the organic family unit. After the results came back aforementioned wife had been taking a gratuitous shit on the toilet when she'd called me into the bathroom. At first I'd thought she was going to ask me to grab a roll of toilet paper from the hall closet. Turned out all she wanted was to let me know my dad wasn't my dad and half the family I loved wasn't my family. Three years later she got breast cancer and they cut off her tits, but I let bygones be bygones. Parents are overrated anyway.

"We're hanging out later," Hayner said as I reached into the backseat to grab my magazine and shirt. He'd parked outside my house and Grandma was peering at us through the blinds. I waved at her. "Are _you_ hanging out later? I mean, you don't have to, which is my way of saying I'll be back here in five hours."

I took another swig from my diluted soda. "I'll think about it."

"Bless your McDonalds compromised heart. You think you have a choice."

"What're we even doing? Because I'm pretty sick of back roading."

Yes, back roading. But if you're Hayner and everyone else on the spectrum of know-how, then it's called _hitting a BR_. This group anointed verb is a prime example of the absolute nothingness that encompasses Dusk Point. Someone woke up one morning and decided instead of smoking kush and sitting on a back porch they could do the exact same thing while wasting gas money and getting lost in the deliverance that is Dusk Point's wilderness. Those who honestly believe it's impossible to get lost in the United States need to rethink the vastness that can encompass a town with the approximate population of 9,000. Back roading is a nice experience for someone with a sense of adventure, but truth be told nothing freaks me out more than being outside while high. Getting lost with people who only pretend they know where they're going is only an added bonus.

"No BR tonight." He turned his iPod back on now that I was no longer there to dictate his music. "Olette and Pence are coming with me to Xigbar's."

"You mean Xigbar's actual house?" I knew I was about to be insulting, but I couldn't help it. "So-how'd you manage that?"

"Damn, Roxas, be a little subtler about letting me know where I sit in this aristocracy. _Dick_…" He knew why I was surprised, though. "I've been there a couple times to buy shake from him. I ran over his fence and left an impression, so he'll text me sometimes. We're cool."

It was obvious who was initiating those text messages. "Sorry you're not the Marquees of Cool. Isn't his house in the middle of God Only Knows Where?"

His next words were spoken philosophically as he shifted back into drive. "In this world we do what we must to get the things we need."

"Uh-huh."

Stepping out of the car and shutting the door behind me without saying goodbye, I headed inside the A-framed cottage with its cobblestone siding and collection of lawn ornaments that were just decorated rocks. Words like _prudence_, _kindness_ and _thankfulness_ were engraved in the stones that sat in my grandma's modest front yard garden. I didn't know what purpose they were supposed to serve. They were hidden by flowers and the occasional crab grass, so it wasn't like I stepped outside everyday with the stark grandma reminder not to be a raging asshole on the brink of absolute prolapse. Then again, grandmas did weird things. Another example being my grandma's collection of shoe trinkets that lined the den no one was supposed to sit in. Rooms without purpose were another thing that mystified me down to the last stitch on their golden silk throw pillows.

"Well, hey there, honey." As soon as I stepped into the off-limits den that was a direct extension to the kitchen I was engulfed in a grandma hug. I was a twenty year old living with his grandparents and I still drifted into her affection as if being returned to the womb. After a moment of letting her wordlessly hug me for too long I hugged back which was the cue to let me go. "Did you have a fun time with Hayner?"

I'm twenty years old. I promise. "Yeah, but we got caught up in a funeral procession."

She'd turned to go back to the stove only to stop. "You drove _with_ the procession?"

"No," but that probably would've been fifty percent funnier. "We had to wait for it to pass. It was going through that intersection in front of the donut shop."

"Which donut shop? The new one or the old one?"

"I thought they were the same age."

Her hand reached for the pepper beside the stove. "No, one's newer than the other."

"New by whose standards? They've both been here since I was born."

"No," she paused to think and then clicked her tongue. "No, they haven't."

My grandma loves me more than she should. During the 60s she was a stone cold fox with platinum blond hair and a rocking body. While working through her first marriage she chomped gum and sewed jackets in a now closed down factory eight blocks north. After finally getting a divorce from her first husband and becoming the stepmother to Dungeons and Dragons she settled down with my grandpa, his other kids and a few of her own. From there she morphed into the family's figurehead for love and support. No matter how you turned it she would've never been my biological grandmother, but that was a nonissue for the both of us.

"I'm going out later." I was doing that thing where someone stands in the entranceway of a room anticipating a cue to leave. I rolled onto the tips of my toes and fell back onto my heels. "If you hear me leave and the front door opens later tonight, then it's me. You're not being robbed or anything."

"Are you eating dinner with us?" She flipped on the oven's light to display a casserole dish. "It should be done in about an hour and a half."

"I'll be home." My index finger pointed up as I began walking backward toward the stairs parallel to the front door. "I'm going to take a nap. Yell for me when it's done."

"Well, _okay_." She extended the last word. "I love you, honey."

My grandma loved me so much it made me hate myself. "I love you too."

From there I ran up the carpeted stairs, slipped and rug burned my shin only to finish crawling up the stairs toward my bedroom.

When I was younger and only visited on weekends my room had been dolphin themed for the sake of my cousins who visited. Once dolphins had stopped being something my grandma could stand it converted to Scooby-Doo because I was going through a phase where Scooby and the Gang were the reason I breathed. Scooby lasted until the end of middle school and then there was the Dark Age when Grandma attempted to turn it into a respectable guest room with grandma furniture. Junior year of high school happened and I moved in on them. Immediately I hiked my leg on the place and it turned into my junk haven with galaxy painted walls and cool colored stained glass lamps.

I yanked on a sweatshirt, took off my pants and floated toward the bed with my toenails dragging the floor. This was how I handled my days off. I slept like someone had beaten my face in for sleeping with his wife. It wasn't as if I had anything better to do anyway. No matter my mood I was the vigilante death sentence the second I collapsed onto my bed. It only ever took me three minutes to bleed into the mattress.

* * *

"Supper time!"

When my eyes opened I snorted with an intake of breath. I didn't know where I was. The sun had set and my bedroom was draped in its usual low lit haze of turquoise and cobalt, but I was still disoriented. For a second I could've sworn someone had thrown me into a bed of sea weed twenty feet beneath the ocean's surface. Drool crusted the corners of my mouth when I pushed myself up and the hood from my sweatshirt had decided to serve its purpose while I slept. It fell off my head as I stared out the window directly beside my bed. The neighborhood had quieted, trees were still, and all I could focus on was the fact that there was food downstairs. I also really wanted to rub one out. I didn't have time for the latter idea, though. The older I got the more life became a tossup between sustenance and sex.

Downstairs I trudged with crust in my eyes. Grandma used to call it stardust, but it was annoying eye snot that sometimes hurt to pick out if I aimed my nails wrong. One of my aunts stood in the kitchen with her toddler balanced on her hip and a blanket in hand. She was loudly discussing her workday with Grandma and only smiled at me as I robotically made a beeline for the stack of paper plates on the countertop. The spread was typical grandma food, and it was by an act of God I hadn't packed on twenty pounds since living with her. I wasn't particularly vain or body conscious, but a high metabolism was one of my finer assets thanks to prior athleticism.

My seat at the table was empty except for a glass of crushed ice and unopened can of diet Mountain Dew. Holding my plate, I stared at it for a long time and furrowed my brow before glancing over at Grandma who was busy informing my aunt there was no time like the present to rework her life if her job was just that painful. I opened my mouth and wanted to say something but instead I stared at the glass for another twenty seconds too long. She did these things all the time, but she never let me stop her. My laundry was always done for me, my bedroom would be a wreck when I went to work and I'd come home to a clean floor, and she always made sure there was a fridge packed with my favorite foods. I didn't know what to do when these things happened, and when I stuttered over attempting to sincerely thank her I coined myself as World's Biggest Asshole. Because of her kindness I was constantly aware of how she could kick me out at any minute.

"So, where's Grandpa?" I asked while setting down my food and continuing to stare at the glass with a concerned frown. "It's already dark. Won't he crash or something driving this late?"

"Roxas, don't say things like that. He's working late. Another game…"

My grandpa was a professional photographer. "Oh, sorry."

Dinner ended with a clean plate and me eavesdropping on family drama I didn't have energy to comment on. The cousins were late on their mortgages, someone was fucking my stepsister in the back of a Honda Civic, and my uncle was robbing my great evangelical grandma blind. The ice in the bottom of my glass turned into a source of amusement as I shook, tipped, ended up with a face full and proceeded to open my mouth before crunching down. For years my grandma tried to tell me the cause of compulsive ice chewing was anemia, but after getting checked it turned out I was just obnoxious. Self-implemented brain freeze came to a halt when the phone in my hoodie's pocket buzzed. Hayner sent a text to make sure I wasn't backing out on him, and I wasn't, but I wanted to. No one at Xigbar's was a friend of mine and getting to know people was its own kind of punishment.

At the last minute I showered and did myself the disservice of pulling on a beanie even though it was hotter than a two dollar pistol. Why was I wearing a hat in the middle of a heat wave? Because the top of my hair flipped upward in a stream of blond duck asses. I wasn't sure what celestial entity had thought it was hilarious to design my cowlick, but I hadn't laughed once during the hours I'd spent before school attempting to tame the beast. If my hair had to be defined as a person, then it was Courtney Love post-Kurt Cobain. It was mourning through substance abuse, misunderstood and barely salvaging an already non-existent career.

Hayner showed up while I was in the middle of picking at my happy trail with a set of tweezers. It wasn't because I needed to shave. It was because I _could_. Testing the limitations of my body hair's elasticity had garnered appeal for no reason other than boredom induced curiosity. Because I was so concentrated on my follicles my Eddie Money ringtone startled me into jabbing myself. I shuddered as skin broke and blood pooled to the surface of my navel.

"Son of a bitch!" I tossed the metal instrument aside and grabbed my phone to check and make sure it was in fact Hayner. Of course it was. "I'm actually fucking stupid…"

Without saying goodbye to anyone I bounded down the stairs while shoving my wallet into my back pocket and out the front door I went in a single stream of motion. There I was greeted by both humidity and the sight of Olette wildly gesturing along with Hayner to whatever was playing on the iPod. Pence was determinedly staring at his Gameboy in the backseat and somehow managing to tune them out, but I paused on my sidewalk watching. Olette and Hayner were synchronized and I had competition for the lead spot in Hayner's first music video. Sometimes I didn't know if Hayner wanted to make videos or be in them, but the first sounded significantly less impossible.

Hayner rolled down his window and started to beat on the steering wheel while Olette swiped her hands over one another in time with what I then could tell was Nicki Minaj. It was a change from the usual EPMD, and I began copying Olette's motions while walking toward the car until all three of us were bobbing in time with a song about boys who spent all their money on love. Pence was nodding his head along to the beat when I opened the door to take my seat beside him. None of us said anything until we were at the first stop sign and the song was over.

I leaned forward. "Isn't Xigbar like old as hell?"

Hayner wasn't about to dispute that. "When you stay around here you're young forever."

The matriarch of our group pursed her lips and proceeded to pull her hair back into a ponytail. "I don't think that's how it works."

We were high school friends who hadn't left Dusk Point. The reason for staying was a tug of war between finances and indecisiveness. Olette was finishing her general education with Hayner so that they could transfer to their dream schools with good academic standing. Pence had decided to take a few years off to make sure he was investing his student loans wisely. _Me_? I was silently floundering with a new plan every two months. I'd gone from high school cheerleader co-captain alongside Olette with a full academic scholarship to sweaty palms in front of a school counselor. It took until applicant deadlines had passed for me to realize I'd never considered planning for the future. This induced my first experience with anxiety, and I hadn't rose above it to date.

"Hanging out with the old dudes," Pence murmured as his fingers continued tapping away at his game. "All hail the suppository party."

"I don't know, Pence," I offered while lifting my shirt and examining my stomach with my phone's light. A scab had already formed. "It sounds like our kind of all you can eat 3 PM buffet."

Xigbar lived on the county line for a reason. We were in what archeologists consider to be a dry county, which is apparently a prehistoric notion to the rest of the world. There were no bars, convenient liquor stores on every corner or even an aisle in the local grocery store to appease the rampant alcoholism. The county over was Catholic-wetted with not just one but two brick-boxed liquor stores on the line. Not only was it the closest place we could get booze, but it was also the cause of our high number of annual drunk driving collisions. My senior year I had gone to the funeral of a girl and her boyfriend because they'd been eradicated by a man driving home completely wasted. Graduation hadn't been the prettiest ceremony, for sure. Things like that swept Dusk Point off its feet and onto its ass more than the downturn of factory employment.

But Xigbar's house was nestled out of the way within a cluster of trees. This made the place the prime spot for wrongdoing. Because he owned it that gave people who filtered in and out even more freedom. His house was the place everyone knew and heard about, but there were maybe twelve people who spent time there. This was why it was such a big deal for Hayner to gain access to the place. Socially it was in the grotto, but people still admired the tightknit friend group because they were _fun_. In their own Benchmark and Marlboro Red 100s way they were the pinnacle of what people wanted to be. When I was in high school I'd heard names. Xigbar was a legend in the Titan sort of way along with Xemnas and Saix, but then there were people like Larxene and Marluxia. I'd seen them before, but they were all fleeting encounters, of course. They hadn't had time for a regularly drug tested high schooler with theoretical pompoms.

By the time we made it out of the breakneck back roads alive and pulled up to Xigbar's crowded driveway I was car sick. Pence laughed at me when I scrambled for the handle and sucked in breaths of dense fresh air. Complete darkness had set on our county, my organs were pleading for an exit through my throat, and I was panting like I was practicing Lamaze technique.

"Yo—" Hayner was giving me a mildly embarrassed stare. "Are you okay?"

"_Don't _look at me."

Hayner led us to the front door as if he owned the place. The place being a typical farmhouse in the middle of a typical nowhere with the most typical uninspiring porch swing that swayed with the typical feeble summer breeze. From behind the screen door Santana's _Smooth_ poured and someone was loudly singing along with the guitar while a whiskey fried voice lazily sputtered through lyrics.

Stepping inside led us into a living room empty of people but open concept enough to get a good view of what we were getting into. Through the forest of recliners, ashed on coffee table and flatscreen with its Xbox Live home screen stagnant I could see the kitchen with a homemade yet-to-be stained dining table and a crowd of loudly laughing people surrounding it. Xigbar was gesturing at Larxene as she gave him an uninspired stare and she was the first to notice us. The blonde with her tiny stature and intimidating red lipstick snapped at Xigbar and pointed at the four of us. Without knowing what to say I was glancing at Hayner because he knew them. He'd been invited. _He_ was responsible for whatever happened to us beyond that point.

"Look at what the short bus dropped off! I stay the same age and you kids just keep getting younger." Xigbar was older than I remembered with his cigarillo in hand, beer in the other and shit eating grin. He stuck the cigar into corner of his mouth and reached out to shake our hands. The formality was uncustomary, but he waited on our names without giving his own. Of course we knew who he was.

My handshake was firm because I'd heard that's how you were supposed to shake the President's hand. I was an honest to God fucking idiot for putting him on that pedestal. "It's Roxas."

"Roxas, huh—well, hell. I've seen you before. You know how I know your friend, right? He backed into my fence. Drives by here and gets lost almost every time, too. Always has to call."

I turned to Hayner who was lighting up and ignoring that. "Amazing, Hayner—actually inspiring."

"Don't grind on him, though. He's cool. I like him."

Someone slammed their hand onto the table and loudly groaned in defeat. Xigbar beckoned for us to follow him and snapped his eye patch into place. I'd never heard the story behind how he lost his eye because it changed once a week and always involved a feral animal.

The group around the table was playing poker and the collective male figures were shirtless and concentrated on their hands. The only girl in the realm aka Xigbar's queen, who wasn't above river dancing on my face for sneezing the wrong way, paced in her rebel flag bikini top and high-waisted shorts. She was mocking everyone's hand with ugly jeers, but I could see exactly what she was doing. Larxene was purposely riling up players and making the entire group doubt and fear each other. From where I stood I could see Marluxia's worthless hand and she gasped as if it were the Sistine Chapel.

When the B-52s' _Love Shack_ rolled from the iPod dock there was a collective groan and Larxene yelled. "Who the hell's iPod is this? Tell me now so I can beat you into a hysterectomy!"

At the head of the table sat the last person on earth I expected to recognize. In his hands were cards he was glowering at, on his bony wrists were individual handcuffs that sat on his pale skin like bangles and when his gaze flickered up he brought back his broad shoulders as if proudly taking the blame for being the last person on earth Larxene saw fit to exist. He broke face and cackled at her before reaching upward toward the ceiling with a grunting stretch. Across his hairy abdomen in exact mirroring of Tupac's 'Thug Life' tattoo sat the two words 'Mama Tried.' The expansion of his chest was clean shaven and dotted in freckles but there were none to be seen on his face. He'd grown past that point of juvenile dusting and exchanged it for impressive armpit hair and a five o'clock shadow.

He drummed his fingers along the edge of the table. "Open your mouth a little wider, Larxene. A cock might fall out."

"You're a wordsmith, Axel. A real Pulitzer Prize winner. I can't wait for that ceremony to finally compensate for the hefty package you're lacking." Larxene sat on his lap and the way he threw back his hands indicated it was the last thing he'd expected or wanted. He nearly lost his cards. "It'll be a real void filler. Unlike you..."

"I couldn't have said it better. Your birth canal is the wind tunnel people indoor skydive in. A real void, baby. I'm modest enough to admit I can't fill it, but scientists say its impossible to survive a black hole, anyway. There's no real loss on my end."

"People like you are the reason the police keep accidentally forgetting to check sinkholes for bodies."

"You know—that is _really _cold coming from someone who used to tell me they love me."

"You know—it is _really_ sad when people your age reference back to high school."

Axel was the same person who'd escaped arrest. Realizing I hadn't told my friends about what I'd seen meant I couldn't tug Hayner to the side and explain why exactly I was one slip of self-control from yelling about how I knew who he was. That was the thing, though. I didn't know who Axel was beyond his name. More than once I'd heard about the things he was capable of, but I'd been conditioned by my grandma to take it all with a grain of salt. We never knew the people we talked about the most.

When Axel folded with a groan of defeat Xigbar wildly laughed at him and tossed an unopened beer at his chest that Larxene ducked to dodge. The thunk and his wheeze followed, but Axel gave him a suggestive look that was immediately turned down by a wicked stare of disgust. Only when Axel stood up to get a beer that wasn't a ticking time bomb did I realize he was wearing the same pants and boots from before. His entire body was an idol for the Saint of Grime.

Marluxia sat with shoulder length pastel pink hair faded into silvery patches, and from the side of the table he gave off a delayed laugh. His attire made it look as if he'd been ripped directly from _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_ with the sunglasses and hat to bring it home. He wrinkled his nose and spoke with an uncertain tone. "Was that a queef joke?"

Axel paused, thought about it, and his laughter crackled. "Now it is."

Xigbar left us to fend for ourselves without bothering to introduce us. I rolled my lips together and stood to the side. How this was supposed to be a party worth anyone's time was a little beyond me. There was only beer and incessant nagging from the group of older regulars and me wondering why I hadn't drove myself. Then again, there wasn't much integrity in painting the town red in my grandma's van. Looking less like an asshole didn't make up for the fact I was trapped in a house with people I didn't know. Not only that, but I had intentions of drinking once someone handed over a beer. Predictably, Olette wouldn't hold out and live up to her DD anointment and we'd be stuck at Xigbar's until someone sobered up enough to get behind the wheel. It was always either Pence or me.

The redhead raised up his beer and wore a severe stare. "Who's sober here?"

A lengthy silence loomed over us. Technically, all of my friends and I were, but none of us were about to speak up. It was then I noticed exactly how tall Axel was. He stood at the exact same height as the refrigerator he'd pulled his beer from and I had always thought no one could out height Xigbar, but there they stood at about equal stances. I couldn't have reached his shoulders, and I contemplated staring at my open palms and asking a well-earned inquiry. How man was I? Granted I was built like an Olympic gymnast, so there wasn't much concern warranted.

Xigbar volunteered Hayner who not-so-sneakily planted a hand on my arm as if silently letting me know I _was_ going with him. "Kid over there is. All of them are."

"You two!" Axel grabbed his hideously orange zip up hoodie off the back of a chair and yanked it on. He zipped it half-way over his bare chest and proceeded to tug the lengthy red hair out from beneath the hood. "Touchy feeling over there! We're out of beer! Let's go!"

For someone who looked like he hadn't seen five dollars in ten years it came as a shock when he yanked out an iPhone, checked his bank account and padded out the front door through a cloud of moths that were attempting to make nice with the porch light.

Hayner dragged me toward the door. "Come on."

I opened my mouth in protest. "But I have to protect Pence."

"Olette is more than capable, you wiener."

"Says the biggest wiener I have ever had the misfortune of meeting."

We stepped outside and Axel was standing there with his face leaned over his phone. "So, like, I didn't catch your names, kiddos."

I raised my hand like a boy scout. "Roxas."

Hayner mimicked me. "Hayner."

Axel humored us both and did the same with a casual smile over his shoulder. "Axel."


End file.
